Program:

FAIROUZ : Pax Universalis [World Premiere]

MOZART : Concerto No.10 for Two Pianos

POULENC : Concerto for Two Pianos

SAINT SAËNS : Symphony No. 3

Program Notes

October 2015 Program Notes by Steven Ledbetter

MOHAMMED FAIROUZ (b. 1985)Pax UniversalisMohammed Fairouz was born in New York City in 1985. He composed Pax Universalis this year on commission from the Santa Rosa Symphony; this is the first performance. The score calls for three flutes, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, three percussion, harp, piano/celesta, and strings. Duration is about 12 minutes.

At the age of thirty, Mohammed Fairouz has already experienced more of the world—having by his teens visited five continents—than most people ever do, and he has written such a remarkable volume and variety of music, in so many genres and to such wide acclaim, that he already stands high in the ranking of composers who are making a significant contribution to the world’s music. Moreover he has already received more recordings of his music than many composers twice his age, on nine labels (among them the distinguished German company Deutsche Grammophon, where he is the youngest composer ever to have a full disk devoted to his music). And he gets frequent performances of his music as widely as any composer currently active.

How has all this happened? First of all, it clearly occurs because Fairouz is a prodigiously gifted and well-trained composer. One of his teachers, the late Gunther Schuller, introduced him to me a few years ago with the comment that he was one of the most exciting young composers anywhere today. He studied at the Curtis Institute and the New England Conservatory. In addition to Schuller, his teachers included György Ligeti and Richard Danielpour. Beyond that, he is open to the widest possible range of musical influences, from those traditionally taught in European and American conservatories to those learned in study and performance of Arabic music and other ethnic and popular traditions.
He is also a composer who responds strongly to words and often sets them to music or composes instrumental music in response to a text that has touched him deeply. In this respect, he is not an “art for art’s sake” composer, but one who writes with a humaneness that sees music as a response to human dilemmas and achievement. His earliest composition, at age seven, was a song to a poem of Oscar Wilde. Since then he has composed hundreds of art songs (including fifteen song cycles), an oratorio, and—at the age of twenty-two—his first opera, Sumeida’s Song, based on a play by Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim about his protagonist’s attempt to “bring modernity to darkness and break an endless cycle of violence,” with serious consequences to himself.

At the same time he has written in virtually every instrumental genre, from solo instrument to symphony (he has already written four symphonies, the most recent, In the Shadow of No Towers, based on Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about the destruction of the World Trade Center in Fairouz’s native New York in 2001. (It has been recorded, and excerpts from the symphony and many other works can be sampled on his website, mohammedfairouz.com.)

It is common for composers today to talk about their new pieces by outlining technical details in the music, which often means little to any but other composers. Mohammed Fairouz is far more concerned with the listener’s personal response to the purpose of the music, especially in a work like this new score, Pax Universalis (Latin for “universal peace”), which has a clear, humane expressive goal. To that end, he has written the following commentary about the meaning of his musical intentions to all, not just to those technically skilled in music. In this respect, the tone poem given its premiere here follows closely in the main thrust of his creative life.

Pax Universalis

I wish to dedicate this work, by gracious suggestion of His Royal Highness Prince Turki Al-Faisal, to the children who have fallen victim to global conflict. His Royal Highness adds the following statement: "A most worthy subject for this dedication and sentiment are the children who are dying as a result of the wars raging in all parts of the world. If only peace would come, these children would be alive."

As a composer who is uninterested in the idea of “music for the sake of music” or “abstract” music, the genre of the tone-poem has always held a special place in my heart when it comes to purely instrumental music. I’ve always regarded the symphony orchestra, with its diverse strands of different instruments with their different colors, origins, and dynamics, as an ideal collective of human beings who come together for the exalted purpose of creative labor. The counterpoint of these different voices coming together, but not losing their individuality, seems like an exemplary model for the cultures of the world to live in connection with one another. Rather than lose their individual voices, they enhance the whole collective; they form a beautiful tapestry of counterpoint. This is Beethoven’s symphonic community of “Alle Menschen werden Brüder.”

So when I received a commission to write my first tone-poem for orchestra after four symphonies, several concertos, and other orchestral works, I chose for my subject what JFK described as “the most important topic on earth: peace.” But peace is too general a notion to describe the highest aspirations of symphonic forces raising their voices in counterpoint. This peace had to be one, like Beethoven’s, of universal human brotherhood.

“What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of peace do we seek?” JFK continues, “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.”

In the decades since JFK delivered that speech, our greatest diplomats and artists alike have discarded the myopic idea of a Pax Americana or a Pax Britannica, etc. The best have been working for the only sort of sustainable peace, and that must be a peace of harmony and counterpoint—the type of peace embodied in the highest ideals of the symphony orchestra and the inspiration that humanity can derive from the music that the special community can produce: a universal peace, a Pax Universalis.

“I am talking about genuine peace,” continues Kennedy, “the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”
–Mohammed Fairouz (2015)

WOLFGANG AMADÈ MOZART (1756-1791)Concerto for 2 pianos, in E-flat major, K.365 [316a]Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, who began calling himself Wolfgang Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777, was born in Salzburg, Austria, on 27 January 1756 and died in Vienna on 5 December 1791. He composed his concerto for two pianos in 1779 to play with his sister, Nannerl. In addition to the two pianos, the score calls for two oboes, two clarinets (optional), two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani (optional), and strings. The parts marked “optional” were composed later. Duration is about 24 minutes.

Mozart composed this concerto in 1779 to play with his older sister Nannerl. It is also the last piano concerto he wrote before leaving Salzburg and moving to Vienna in an attempt to be on his own and to escape his father’s kindly, but overwhelming, domination. He was, after all, twenty-three years old and felt ready to be independent—something that Papa Leopold never wanted to allow.
The two siblings had already been making music together at least fifteen years during the tours that Leopold took them on when they were still children to show off the remarkable performing talents of both of them, and the truly extraordinary compositional talents of his son. After Wolfgang moved to Vienna, Nannerl became—as was expected in her day—a wife and mother, no longer a touring piano virtuoso, so her brother’s piece seems to be not only a warm farewell gift but also, in a sense, a last hurrah.

A concerto for two pianos is likely to differ from one for a solo piano because the very nature of the ensemble assumes that there will be a certain amount of dialogue, of tossing musical ideas back and forth, even of decorating them playfully, as if in competition. All of this is natural enough in any case, and even more so when the intended performers are siblings.

Wolfgang was careful to divide up the striking passages fairly equally between the two soloists, yet the concerto is far more than a chance for a musical rivalry in front of an audience.

The first movement does not aim for particular novelty in its unfolding of the musical ideas, but it is vigorous and lyrical by turns. As the movement unfolds, it proves to be wonderfully spacious, as if Mozart is thoroughly enjoying himself and letting his ideas flow freely.

The slow movement is delicate and refined, with much decorative material in dialogue between the soloists. For the most part the orchestra stays in the background and allows the playful charm of brother and sister to emerge in the solo parts.

If the slow movement was measured and courtly, the finale is energetic to a high degree, full of rhythmic drive in its main rondo theme, out of which Mozart builds an elaborate sonata-rondo shape. One of the great joys of Mozartean rondos is the surprises that the composer engineers in returning to the main theme, and this movement is no exception. Momentary touches of lyrical grace or chromatic poignancy make the inevitable return to the rondo theme all the more joyous.

Francis PoulencConcerto in D minor for two pianos and orchestraFrancis Jean Marcel Poulenc was born in Paris on January 7, 1899, and died there on January 30, 1963. He composed his Concerto in D minor for two pianos and orchestra in the summer of 1932 on a commission from the Princesse Edmond de Polignac. It received its first performance in Venice at the Festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music, on 5 September that year. The composer was joined by Jacques Février on the two pianos, and Desiré Defauw conducted the orchestra of La Scala. The orchestral part calls for flute and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones and tuba, a varied percussion section including bass drum, cymbals, triangle, small drums with and without snare, military drum, castanets and tarolle (but not timpani!), and strings.

French composers have rarely been bashful about writing music whose main purpose was to give pleasure. At the other extreme from the metaphysical profundities that have, on occasion, engulfed German music, the French have produced a stream of composers for whom “light” did not have to mean “trivial” (as it so often did in Germany or England or America in the 19th century). A sense of humor did not necessarily bar a Frenchman from the act of composing (as it seems to have done elsewhere, judging from the earnestness of so much of the music that was turned out). A Chabrier or a Saint‑Saëns could perpetrate a fine musical jest without losing his union card as a composer of serious music, and an Offenbach (admittedly German‑born, though thoroughly French in culture) could make a busy career as a master of the lighter side and aspire nonetheless to grand opera. It was—significantly—French composers who began openly twitting the profundities of late Romantic music in the cheeky jests of Satie and in many works by the group that claimed him as their inspiration, the “Group of Six,” which included Francis Poulenc.

During the first half of his career, Poulenc’s work was so much in the lighter vein that he could be taken as a true follower of Satie’s humorous sallies. That changed in 1935, when, following the death of a close friend in an automobile accident, Poulenc reached a new maturity, recovering his lost Catholic faith and composing works of an unprecedented seriousness, though without ever losing sight of his lighter style as well. Thereafter sacred and secular mingled almost equally in his output, and he could shift even within the context of a single phrase from melancholy or somber lyricism to nose‑thumbing impertinence. He became a successful opera composer and indisputably the greatest French song composer since Debussy. Critic Claude Rostand once wrote of Poulenc that he was “part monk, part guttersnipe,” a neat characterization of the two strikingly different aspects of his musical personality. As Ned Rorem said in a memorial tribute, Poulenc was “a whole man always interlocking soul and flesh, sacred and profane.”

Possessing the least formal musical education of any noted composer of this century, Poulenc learned from the music that he liked. His own comment is the best summary:

The music of Roussel, more cerebral than Satie’s, seems to me to have opened a door on the future. I admire it profoundly; it is disciplined, orderly, and yet full of feeling. I love Chabrier: Espana is a marvelous thing and the Marche joyeuse is a chef‑d’oeuvre...I consider Manon and Werther [by Massenet] as part of French national folklore. And I enjoy the quadrilles of Offenbach. Finally my gods are Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, Stravinsky, and Mussorgsky. You may say, what a concoction! But that’s how I like music: taking my models everywhere, from what pleases me.

One of the composers missing from this list is Debussy, from whom Poulenc may have learned what one analyst calls “cellular writing,” in which a musical idea one or two measures in length is immediately repeated, with or without variation. This kind of mosaic construction is the opposite of a long‑range developmental treatment in which themes are broken down into their component parts and put together in new guises. The aim (and the effect) is to produce music that seems somehow instinctive, not labored or intellectual, but arising directly from the composer’s spontaneous feelings. It is a device employed by Mussorgsky and Debussy (who, like Poulenc, admired Mussorgsky), and it was taken up by both Satie and Stravinsky with the aim of writing music that might be anti‑Romantic.
Poulenc composed the two‑piano concerto during his early period, when he was creating a large number of delightfully flippant works rich in entertaining qualities. He may perhaps have been influenced in the lightheartedness of his 1932 concerto by the fact that Ravel, the year before, had composed two piano concertos, one of which (the Concerto in G) had much of the character of a divertimento. Certainly Poulenc’s work could join the Ravel in cheerfulness: its main goal is to entertain, and in that it has succeeded admirably from the day of its premiere.

Poulenc’s additive style of composition makes his music particularly rich in tunes; they seem to follow, section by section, one after another, with varying character—sometimes hinting at the neo‑classical Stravinsky, sometimes at the vulgarity of the music hall. The very opening hints at something that will come back late in the first movement, a repetitious, percussive figure in the two solo pianos inspired by Poulenc’s experience of hearing a Balinese gamelan at the 1931 Exposition Coloniale de Paris.
The second movement begins in the unaccompanied first piano with a lyric melody which Poulenc described as follows:

In the Larghetto of this concerto, I allowed myself, for the first theme, to return to Mozart, for I cherish the melodic line and I prefer Mozart to all other musicians. If the movement begins alla Mozart, it quickly veers, at the entrance of the second piano, toward a style that was standard for me at that time.

Though the style soon changes, there are returns to “Mozart” and possibly some passages inspired by Chopin as well. The finale is a brilliant rondo‑like movement, so filled with thematic ideas that it is hard to keep everything straight. But then, Poulenc was here showing us the most “profane” side of his personality. This is the “guttersnipe,” a genial, urbane, witty man whose acquaintance we are glad to have made.

CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS Symphony No. 3Charles Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris on October 9, 1835, and died in Algiers on December 16, 1921. He composed the Symphony No. 3 in 1886 and conducted the first performance on May 19 that year, at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert in London. (On the first half of that concert he played Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto while Arthur Sullivan conducted.) The score calls for three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, organ, piano four-hands, and strings. Duration is about 36 minutes.

For all that a handful of his works are regular favorites, we really know very little about Camille Saint‑Saëns, one of the most prolific and longest‑lived composers of the nineteenth century. There are several reasons for this. In part the sheer number of works overwhelms all but specialists; we know, for example, only one of his twelve operas. Few people have heard more than the Third Violin Concerto or the Second Piano Concerto (of five). In fact, his best‑known piece of all, the Carnival of the Animals, was written as a private joke and never intended for publication. Another reason for Saint‑Saëns' relative obscurity was his careful control of himself; we know next to nothing about the man, as opposed to the musician. There are no diaries to analyze or confessions to be drawn from his voluminous private correspondence. He was educated and remained interested in a wide range of subjects. He published articles on the décor of ancient Roman theaters and communicated with learned bodies on questions of astronomy. He analyzed philosophical questions and wrote poetry and plays, at least one of which was performed with some success.

But most of all he was an astonishingly fluent, gifted musician. He played the keyboard part of a Beethoven violin sonata in a private concert before he was five years old, and at ten he made his formal debut playing concertos by Mozart and Beethoven, then offering to play, as an encore, any Beethoven sonata that the audience might be pleased to request. Berlioz said of him, "He knows everything, but lacks inexperience." If Berlioz was "all nerves," as one writer has expressed it, Saint‑Saëns was all intellect.

He was born in the year that Donizetti wrote Lucia di Lammermoor, and when he died, Alban Berg was in the middle of Wozzeck. Dickens wrote The Pickwick Papers when Saint‑Saëns was a toddler, and T.S. Eliot was completing The Waste Land as he died. Late in his life he found himself attacked for old-fashioned attitudes; he despised the music of Debussy and was horrified when he attended the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Those who found him a fuddy-duddy claimed he composed "well-written bad music." His style was strongly influenced by such astonishingly diverse composers as Mozart and Liszt. He was a renowned Mozart performer all his life, and he always admired the clarity of thought and melodic line of that master. But he was a close personal friend of Liszt's, and his keyboard technique developed from the virtuosic exercises of that master. It was in imitation of Liszt that Saint‑Saëns began composing symphonic poems; we hardly hear them today, alas, except for Danse macabre, which, like so many wonderful and effective pieces, has been relegated to Pops concerts. Liszt returned the favor in a big way by encouraging Saint‑Saëns to complete one of his operas and promising to perform it when opera managements were leery of putting it on the stage because of its Biblical subject; the result, of course, was Samson et Dalila, the one opera by Saint‑Saëns that still holds the stage.

The Third Symphony bears a dedication “to the memory of Franz Liszt.” The Hungarian composer, who had exercised a profound influence on his French colleague, died in July 1886 without having heard the symphony that was to bear this dedication. The dedication was not only an avowal of long-standing friendship but also of musical connection. Saint-Saëns learned his technique of thematic transformation from the tone poems of Liszt. And the idea of adding an organ to the instrumentation of a symphony came from one of those tone poems, Hunnenschlacht (The Battle of the Huns). Saint-Saëns himself wrote a program note for the premiere in which he remarked that the symphony is divided into two large parts, though, with subdivisions, these correspond quite closely to the four movements of a traditional symphony. He connected the first movement’s abridged development to the Adagio and the scherzo to the finale “so as to avoid somewhat the interminable repetitions which are now more and more disappearing from instrumental music.”

The premiere was a stunning success, and the work has remained popular ever since. Charles Gounod was in the audience at the first performance, and he remarked, “There goes the French Beethoven!” Saint-Saëns must have been delighted. Though the common nickname of “Organ Symphony” (not given by the composer) may hint that the organ plays a prominent role throughout, in fact its appearance is discreetly handled, being absent for long stretches, sometimes forming part of a distinctly impressive sense of orchestral color, and occasionally (as at the beginning of the finale), dominating the entire ensemble.

For the world premiere, Saint-Saëns obliged the Royal Philharmonic Society by providing a program note offering his guidance for listening to the symphony, which is worth reproducing in part here:

After an introductory Adagio, of a few measures, the string quartet [i.e., the string family] introduces the initial theme, which is somber and agitated (Allegro moderato). The first transformation of this theme leads to a second motif, distinguished by greater tranquility. A short development presents the two themes simultaneously, after which the motif appears briefly, in a characteristic form, for full orchestra.

A second transformation of the opening theme includes, now and then, the plaintive notes of the introduction. Varied episodes gradually bring calm, thus preparing the Adagio in D-flat. The extremely peaceful, contemplative theme is given to the violins, violas, and cellos, which are supported by organ chords. This theme is taken up by clarinet, horns, and trombone, with a string accompaniment.

After a variation (in arabesques) by the violins, the second transformation of the initial theme of the Allegro reappears, bringing a vague feeling of unrest, intensified by dissonant harmonies. These soon give way to the theme of the Adagio, this time performed by some strings with organ accompaniment and with a persistent rhythm of triplets presented by the preceding episode. This movement ends with a mystical coda, which sounds alternately the chords of D-flat major and E minor.

The second movement commences with an energetic phrase (Allegro moderato). This is followed immediately by a third transformation of the first movement’s initial theme, more agitated than before. Into it enters a fantastic spirit that is frankly disclosed in the Presto. Arpeggios and scales, swift as lightning, on the piano are accompanied by the syncopated rhythm of the orchestra.

This tricky gaiety is interrupted by an expressive phrase from the strings. The repetition of the Allegro moderato is followed by a second Presto, which at first appears to be a repetition of the first Presto. Scarcely has it begun, however, before a new theme is heard, grave, austere (trombone, tuba, double-basses), strongly in contrast to the fantastic music. There is a struggle for mastery, which ends in the defeat of the restless, diabolical element.

The phrase rises to orchestral heights and rests there as in the blue of a clear sky. After a vague reminiscence of the initial theme of the symphony, a Maestoso in C major announces the approaching triumph of the calm and lofty thought. The initial theme, wholly transformed, is now exposed by strings and pianoforte (four hands), and repeated by the organ with the full strength of the orchestra.

Then follows a development built on a rhythm of three measures. An episode of a tranquil, pastoral character (oboe, flute, English horn, clarinet) is twice repeated. A brilliant coda, in which the initial theme by a last transformation takes the form of a violin figure, ends the work.

Though the composer’s description somewhat simplifies the number of transformations in the final phase of the symphony, he nonetheless makes it clear that an essential feature of the work is the way the opening thematic idea returns in each of the sections in a new expressive guise. He has here adapted to the symphony the thematic technique learned from Liszt, so that his dedication to the older master was a kind of warm-hearted interest on that musical investment.

The Organ Symphony remains one of the handful of French symphonies of the romantic era that we hear with any frequency, a work that captures of the expansive spirit of the age while also showing the way (with its web of thematic transformations) to the later symphonies of Franck (an immediate successor to this piece), Chausson and Dukas.

Our 88th season opens with Pax Universalis, a world premiere commission by the renowned Arab-American composer Mohammed Fairouz. A sister act beyond compare, twins Christina and Michelle Naughton perform together like mirror images on two pianos for two magnificent concertos. Saint-Saen’s gloriously tuneful symphony showcases another keyboard instrument, the organ, in what is arguably his finest single work.

Performances sponsored by Judith and Joseph GappaChristina and Michelle Naughton underwritten by Deborah Eid, and by Donovan and Jennifer Ammons.Pax Universalis is underwritten by the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation.